In many ways, the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) specification
represents a unique development in the history of the World Wide Web. In its
inherent ability to allow richly styled structural documents, CSS is both a
step forward and a step backward--but it's a good step backward, and a needed
one. To see what is meant by this, it is first necessary to understand how the
Web got to the point of desperately needing something like CSS, and how CSS
makes the web a better place for both page authors and web surfers.